Days 5 and 6 The Coromandel

Day 5.

A two day instalment as there was no time yesterday …. well not enough anyway!

We left Waiheke after some more super museli 🙂 promptly at 9.45 for the 10.00 ferry… I was a little concerned this was not long enough but proved wrong as we walked onto the ferry at 9.57! Sad to say goodbye to Nat & Grant, they seem to have worked out a great life balance, also Shanti… and the alpacas… do they come in miniature versions?

Arrived bang on time in Aukland and the taxi ordered from Discount Taxis was there… thanks to NZ Rent a car for the tip.. and cost less than half the original journey from the airport.Our car was ready, they had expected us at 8am, however the lady serving… Marie was so helpful (the taxi tip was hers). And by 11.15 or 11.30 we were off to the next stage of the holiday.

We have an old Mazda something with 85+k km but clean and works ok but the sat nav thinks we are in Japan and is in Japanese. You get what you pay for. I used my phone with a free download to navigate instead. Our destination Mangotahi Lodge http://www.mangotahilodge.co.nz. We decided to take the scenic route using the 1st part of the Pacific Coast Highway https://www.explorecentralnorthislandnz.com/itineraries/coast-lakes-geothermals/ but as all sat navs do it directed us through some very dodgy areas before we were going the right way. Quite nice trip but with no where much to stop and signs of lots of coastal erosion of road from storms. We arrived in Thames in the Coromandel for a late lunch at Cafe Melbourne http://cafemelbourne.co.nz and it was nice. Note the link does not work so maybe it is quite new but it is in trip advisor.We bought some beer and wine from the bottle shop and headed up for our new home for the next two nights.

We were greated by the dog Beer and then Karyn and a bit later her husband Steve. What a nice couple, what a nice spot, what a super room, what a great view. (I think you might get we like it!).We got ourselves settled and did a quick trip out to the park entrance to see where we we going tomorrow and headed back for dinner which we were told would be 6.30 to 7.

It turns out we’re eating with them…. not sure I expected that but it was really nice. Super meal of rib of beef, beans, potatoes, garlic bread and salad follows by a super cheesecake and lots of good chat over the table.

We were in bed by 9.

Day 6.

We were up early waking at 6…. slept well.Today the walk to The Pinnacles. http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/coromandel/places/coromandel-forest-park/things-to-do/kauaeranga-kauri-trail/. Ever since seeing this I wanted to do it. After a super breakfast with enough food to make a picnic lunch we were off and at the car park end (a 10 km drive up a drift track) Just after 8 in the pouring rain. This was NOT the plan. After it stopped we set off. What a super walk but it was so so wet. It took some 2 hours to walk scramble and navigate rivers bridges etc to get to the Pinnacles Hut (a backpacker hut for 80) and the stopping off point for a 1 hour climb to the top. After a brief stop of 1/2 a croissant with jam from breakfast and so peanuts we decided to do that last leg. This was fun but slippery. The view from the top looked like this. It should look like this.Then time to head back. We had planned to do a different route down via what is known as the Billy Goat track but when we got to the path split there were signs saying a bridge was down and to not attempt to do the route in wet weather. Well it was very wet and we had been walking in rain all day off and on so we decided to go back the way we came. As we had planned to eat lunch at this point (known as Hydro Dam) we sat under a bush and finished the sandwiches we had made from the left over breakfast and some watermelon and headed down. It was much harder than I expected but so glad we made the effort.

So some 6 hours later we were back at the car and did a quick look around the Park offices and exhibits. Not that exciting.

As we were not ready to go back we decided to explore the west coast a bit and go and have tea at a cafe in Waiomu. https://www.thecoromandel.com/explore/listing/waiomu-cafe. The lady serving us was miserable but we had good cake and coffee and then explored the beach a bit.On our return Steve “fired up” the hot tub… an interesting combi fire / gas burner thing and we ended up sitting for ages just enjoying the view and chatting before dinner.

Dinner was just 3 of us with Steve off at a meeting a great “Penang” style chicken potato coconut milk curry and a blueberry pavlova to finish. Spoilt.

Ready for Rotorua tomorrow.